SURVIVING in a hostile environment, thriving on next to nothing? Now nearly 40, landscape artist Donald Urquhart is a man accustomed to harsh, barren territory - literally and figuratively. Now, however, he's hit the jackpot with a string of awards: a prestigious residency at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (one of six selected from 2000 international submissions), a major bursary from the SAC, a residency at Grizdale, a commission for Perth.

The turning point was a remote site, a North Sea Oil Platform. Urquhart was commissioned by BP to ''decorate'' six huge pillars, 10ft in diameter, part of the main structure.

''The platforms are called after Scottish saints: Mungo, Mirren, Monan etc. Initially BP wanted

traditional pictures of saints on the pillars. I suggested that this might get boring after a time in such close confinement and there could be

different ways of tackling it.''

Urquhart spent two weeks in

the religious room at the Mitchell, not his normal haunt. ''People

could have lost money betting on that! Then I made 700 computer-generated prints of text, imagery, and colour which I laminated onto the pillars. It took time for folk to get to like it - but now they want me to go back and do more on the eight-storey stairwell!''

One remote landscape was quickly followed by another. Urquhart spent two months in Iceland in 1998 courtesy of a #2000 prize from the Friends of the Royal Scottish Academy, travelling around the coast and into the bare grey lava field interior in his Ford Fiesta. ''I have always vowed I'd get to Iceland. I lived in a tent on oatcakes and sardines; it was unbelievably expensive but a privilege to have time just for art. I amassed a wealth of material. It's an amazing landscape!''

The results are at Glasgow's Fly Gallery, 322 Duke Street, until March 28. It is his first Glasgow show since 1994. Don't expect traditional paintings of icebergs or tundra. Urquhart's interpretation is austere, his vision intense and conceptual, his favourite colour grey.

Urquhart likes working in pairs or series. The biggest here is North Atlantic, a set of 65 monochrome crumpled paper sheets which float on the floor evoking the eddies, swirls, and swell of bleak North Atlantic waves in a million shades of grey. These were created from photographs taken from the ferry from Iceland to the Faroes, prints later translated via scanning and commercial ink-jet printing. Last summer Urquhart acted as assistant to Carl Andre (of Tate bricks fame)

and no doubt inspiration for this piece. Andre was helpful on Iceland. ''It grows 1cm every year,'' Urquhart explains. ''The fissure goes right across its centre. One side is

the earth's continental plate, the other the American plate. They

are moving apart. There's one place which Carl told

me about where you can stand between sheer rock walls and, arms stretched, touch each with one finger. Soon you will need longer arms!''

Growing up in rural Perthshire with a forester grandfather and Drumbuich Wood his local stamping ground, environmental concerns began in childhood. Yet Urquhart's art seems to distance itself from any sense of emotion. Outrage is totally lacking. The approach is intellectual and cerebral. He does this by translating the quick marks of drawing on the spot via photography, slides, projection, and tracing, so spontaneity is replaced by painstaking process.

A glass painting, Snow Described Form, shows Iceland's highest volcano, Mount Hekla, in spare white

outline, etched or scratched through a flat spray coat of grey, meticulously re-painted. It has oriental over-tones - thoughts of Mount Fuji are inescapable - and refers to a Japanese haiku about something as permanent as Mt Fuji made transient by being drawn on a steamed up window. A diptych, Two Paintings About Distance, uses linear outline juxtaposed with bright sky blue, a welcome note of colour in his driech world. The largest three-panel picture uses solely pale outline crossed by vertical white bands to interrupt a panorama of a barren lava field.

This last is derived from drawings, but Urquhart says he is more likely nowadays to write on his travels than to draw. ''Increasingly I'm using text - and Scots words. My favourite here is Column of Serenity, which refers to three words: Still Calm Quiet.'' Another text piece, this time inscribed in black granite set in sandstone, is a commission from Perth and sits by the banks of the river Tay. Five black horizontals refer to flood marks on two nearby bridges and their message, ''Behold: Consider'', sums up exactly what the viewer is doing.

Urquhart's last permanent outdoor commission is at Grizdale Forest, Cumbria, where he shifted 42 tons of earth and replaced it by 30 tons of white Dolomite marble chips to create An Enlightened Stand. This reproduces the illusion of deep shadows of brown (ie the earth) thrown by trees across a sunlit glade (ie the marble.) It's hugely effective as a visual image as well as carrying political and cultural connotations. The light, of course, comes from the north! Urquhart is a political artist with a strong sense of nationalism. These austere works reflect his stance; their formal geometrics underlining an uncompromising and serious attitude. Yet for all his cool control, I wish he'd ease up and let the delights of nature, be it iceberg, river, or pine tree, breathe and flow. I know rigor is all the rage. Urquhart may complain about man's grip on the wilderness, but I worry about fashion's

grip on him. Perhaps the Irish will encourage him to show a little heart.

His next project is a series of Icelandic prints at Aberdeen's Peacock Printmakers and Birked Scar, a land work on Elrick Hill, part of the Tyrebagger Sculpture Project. It involves burning a large square into the heather and planting 200 birch trees. His Dublin residency will be preceded by a month's research with the Irish Meteorological Society and the fishing fleet out of Galway.

Going from strength to strength is Fuse/Fly itself, ably headed by Patricia Fleming who secured an impressive 1999 Scottish Arts Council grant of #12,500 for Fly gallery to add to #8000 from Glasgow Council. Fuse, now run by Rathbone Community Industries, started in 1994 as an artists' studio provision organisation. It had its ups and downs, but is now established in Bridgeton and Dundee. Separate but linked, Fuse/Fly (with WASPS studios) provide essential support to Scottish artists, who, with a handful of exceptions, remain impoverished - even when they are well known.